Spanish Radical Left follow Dieudonné

Yves Coleman of Ni patrie ni frontières discusses how Podemos, Izquierda Unida and the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP) as well as representatives of the Spanish “cultural world”, defend the “freedom of expression”of the anti-Semitic magazine El Jueves.1

El Jueves has no inhibition in proclaiming its hatred of Jews as the magazine stated in 2009 : “So says El Jueves, a coarse and anti-Semitic publication...”.2 With such a motto, so proudly sported, its readers can indulge in vile jokes about the “gazpacho3” or “judias” 4(meaning white beans, but also Jewish women in Spanish, that provoke gas (i.e. flatulences, but also an allusion to the gas chambers).

Not only does El Jueves not censor these kind of lousy “jokes” on its website, but it wants to be congratulated for publishing them. Therefore it’s not surprising that El Jueves, in 2011, found it “funny” to say about John Galiano’s pro-Hitler declarations : “The revolutionary ideas of a misunderstood genius.”5 Or to be ironic about a “ghost writer” who supposedly helps Woody Allen to write his scenarios, in an article entitled “Here is the nigger who wrote Woody Allen’s films” (“negro” is the Spanish word for “ghost writer”), “not only are you are not a nigger but you ain’t even Jewish !”

El Jueves likes to play with the stereotypes of the Jew as a schemer, swindler and liar. These disgusting “jokes” are apparently appreciated by the Spanish left. Following the publication of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic cartoons in El Jueves on 10 February 2016, Pablo Iglesias (general secretary of Podemos) and David Fernandez, former member of the CUP in the Catalan Parliament, have, along with other personalities of the “political and cultural world”6, signed a petition protesting against any possible complaint which could be filed against the antisemitic drawings published by El Jueves.7

These distinguished members of the Spanish left have signed a petition against any attempt to “criminalize the freedom of expression” of El Jueves ! Yet these kitsch left intellectuals-and-politicians know very well that this “satirical” magazine regularly denounces what it calls the “Jewish lobbies”.8 Indeed under the title “Eating white beans is considered an anti-Semitic attitude”, we read that “Jewish lobbies” are “small but well positioned”.9

Anti-Semitic comments from readers figure prominently under this article and have not been erased since they were written... in 2009. The drawings which El Jueves published in February 2016 (but my criticism applies also to the previous years)10 on the question of Israel and Palestine represent all Jews with a hooked nose, which is a century-old anti-Semitic stereotype.

Jews represented in the magazine wear either payots, long beards, a wide-brimmed hat and a black coat or an IDF military uniform. This image is exactly the one presented by the French anti-Semitic press and media since the nineteenth century.11 Of course the designers of El Jueves don’t forget to draw a Palestinian in the guise of a Christ who is beaten up by Israeli soldiers, etc. The leftist El Jueves does not hesitate to perpetuate the myth of the Jewish deicide, a dogma officially abandoned by the Catholic Church since... 1965.

If you type entries like “Jews” or “Israel” on the website of this anti-Semitic rag appreciated by part of the Spanish left and intelligentsia, you will come across a plethora of anti-Semitic materials as a drawing below which the magazine says hypocritically : “This content is the work of one of our readers. If it offends you, criticise its author, not us ; and, if it pleases you, all the credit should go to us who have published it.”12

It’s difficult to reveal more clearly the role El Jueves intends to play : it wants to enable its readers to freely express their anti-Semitism, while it refuses to accept any financial consequences (it does not want to lose any shocked readers) but it accepts all the compliments which it can gain through such antisemitic drawings and comments. In short, El Jueves uses the same marketing recipe as all the scavengers who officiate in the press and media today.

But the “journalists” of this magazine do not always hide cowardly behind their readers’ letters or drawings. They also know how to attack the “chosen people”13 by supporting the initiative of a soccer player from the Seville team (the Muslim Franco-Malian Frederic Kanoute) who wears a T-shirt : “Pueblo elegido ? Tu puta madre” (The chosen people ? Fuck yourselves). If you still have doubts, you can finally read that other text which combines vulgarity of expression and emptiness of thought with phrases like “we have been fucked by Israel” for sixty years, because they want to force us to “lick the kosher asses of its fascist leaders”, etc.14

People sometimes ask naively why Spain is one of the European countries where anti-Semitic views are most widespread, although very few Jews live in this beautiful country. However, just as in France, it should not be too surprising since the so-called “radical left” considers that the anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic propaganda is part of the “freedom of expression” and that it must defend anti-Semites’ rights to pollute the media and social networks with their racist propaganda.

References

• The links to the website of “El Jueves”, contained in the notes of this article, are for information only. We do not condone their content.

1. Izquierda Unida (United Left) is an electoral front mainly based on the Spanish Communist Party. Candidatura d’Unitat Popular is a so-called Left Catalanist independentist formation.

10. For example, one can look at this cartoon of Sharon represented as a pig with a swastika (at the end of this article www.libertaddigital.com /espana/2016-02-11/el-jueves-publica-un-escandaloso-libelo-antisemita-sobre-israel- 1276567581/). Let’s recall first that, in the Muslim tradition, Jews are considered as descendants of “pigs, apes and other animals”, and that El Jueves admitted it did not to publish any caricature of Muhammad because it “scared the shit out of them” www.escolar.net/MT/archives/ 2006/02/mahoma_y_el_jue.html to do it. A way of admitting that Jew-bashing is a profitable and non risky business.

11. In his sketch, Dieudonné, the French antisemitic standup comedian, wore both payot and a battle dress, combining both of the stereotypes used by his disciples of El Jueves in 2016.

12. www.eljueves.es/2010/06/02/israel.html 13. www.eljueves.es/2009/01/08/ ponen_moda_las_camisetas_contra_israel.html which could be translated by “Chosen people, all sons of a bitch”. Such a slogan is in fact an “Islamophobic” blasphemy because Abraham (Ibrahim, according to the Quran, “one of our believing servants” “who do good”), Mary (Maryam, whom “God has chosen above all the women of the world”), and her son Jesus (Issa, “a servant of God who appointed me as a Prophet”), all Jews, are mentioned with great respect in the Qur’an, a book supposedly dictated by Allah to the founder of Islam. But Frédéric Kanouté — who brags about his religion (he saved a mosque in Seville from closing by sending a big check) — and the journalists of El Jueves are unaware of the spiritual foundations of Islam — which is not really a surprise. The same ignorance explains why El Jueves shows IDF soldiers checking if Palestinians are circumcised to discover if they are Jewish, ignoring the fact that most Muslims are also circumcised !

Julio Serrano’s antisemitic cartoons1 benefit from the support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, who rehabilitate them into the “world of politics, journalism and culture”,2 a more presentable label for those who promote the cultural and academic boycott of anything which can be linked, in one way or another, to “Zionism” — which may in turn be a Jew (religious or not) or an Israeli. [Unadikum, a so-called “pro-Palestinian” association which actively supports BDS campaigns in Spain has downplayed the criticisms of the cartoons as anti-Semitic in an article entitled “Israel attacks El Jueves”.]

They condemn the indignation expressed by the Jewish community of Madrid, which they also call the “Jewish lobby” or “Israel”. This confusion of terms is perhaps what gives them so little credibility, especially when some of them deny being anti-Semitic, and makes them so effective for others because they only have to denounce the “instrumentalisation of the Holocaust” so they don’t need to debate. It is a shame that the Spanish people who have so much to do in recognition of their rich revolutionary past, and the condemnation of the crimes of Francoism are not more interested in the work of memory by Jews (religious or not) in the world. Their thoughts and self-criticism, their feedback, would probably be useful, to start with on questions of method of work and education. All anti-Zionists are not anti-Semites, they say. We could start to believe them, if only they refrained from digging in this antisemitic substrate, so abundant in their ranks : “The expulsion of the Jews is what Spain did best in its history”, tweeted Ana María C., supporter of Unadikum. A comment among many of the same kind emanating from those circles. We can’t imagine what these people would write if they did not belong to these leftish milieux !

1. Cartoonist working for El Jueves and author of the antisemitic cartoons published in February 2016.

Those who wish to know more about century-old anti-Semitism in Spain may read with profit this article in English : http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-perednik-f03.htm. Despite its completely uncritical view about Israeli governments’ expansionist policy and war crimes, it provides essential information on the significance of anti-Judaism in Spain, and also on the persistent denial of any anti-Semitism by the left as well as by the Spanish right.